This invention relates to a method for coordinating actions among a group of servers. More particularly, this invention relates to a method for coordinating the authentication of clients, aggregation of information, group transactions, and multi-phase commits across a group of servers. The preferred embodiment of the present invention relates to commerce on the World Wide Web.
Electronic commerce is increasing exponentially, especially on the World Wide Web. Many businesses have set up virtual stores on Web sites that allow consumers to shop and purchase products on-line. As a logical progression from these individual virtual stores, virtual malls have also begun to appear on the Web.
As with real malls, virtual malls provide an opportunity to benefit both businesses and consumers. Businesses potentially benefit from their visibility on the mall. For example, a virtual store on a virtual mall may catch the attention of a consumer who originally comes to the mall to buy goods from another store. Consumers may benefit from the opportunities for integration and coordination of goods and services on the mall. A virtual mall may provide, for example, an integrated directory of the goods and services of many virtual stores. In addition, a virtual mall may provide a single point of authentication for all of the virtual stores on the mall. A virtual mall could also coordinate group transactions involving multiple stores.
Thus far, the virtual malls that have appeared on the Web have taken one of two approaches. First, some malls provide a Web page with hyperlinks to independent virtual stores. Second, some malls have provided multiple virtual stores within the same Web site. These latter malls have utilized such systems as the IBM World Avenue system (http://mer.shop.ibm.com) and the Netscape Merchant System (http://home.netscape.com/comprod/products/iapps/capps/mersys.html).
Each of these approaches has disadvantages. The first approach does not provide any coordination among the individual stores except for the collection of their URLs. The second approach, while providing coordination among individual stores, is restrictive in that the virtual stores must be implemented and managed within a single Web site. Thus, to join a virtual mall using the second approach, a business with an established virtual store on the Web may be required to significantly change its implementation.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method for coordinating multiple, independent virtual stores that can be distributed across multiple Web sites.